


It's For Me and You Only

by dynamicsymmetry



Series: Pacify [5]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Bruises, F/M, Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 16:28:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3297011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth and Daryl are both settling into this new... whatever-it-is, with them. Getting sort of comfortable, even. So Beth is doing some musing on what it all means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's For Me and You Only

**Author's Note:**

> A little less porny, a little more meditative. A little more feelings. Lots of feelings.
> 
> As usual, title/soundtrack/general inspiration are FKA twigs. Specifically her song ["Ultraviolet".](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A449YxUY_8)

Once she would have been horrified by this.

That was a long time ago. A lifetime.

Now everything is different, and she isn't horrified. Horror doesn't come anywhere near this. Maybe for him it still sometimes gets like that, and sometimes he's still a little afraid; she can feel it in him, a tremble in his hands when he puts them on her, which vanishes before too long as he handles her, as he moves her where he wants her - where he knows she _wants to be._ As he's rough with her, increasingly _more_ than rough, and in the end when he's gentle again, when he's stroking her and soothing her and tracing his fingers - with a kind of wonder - over the marks he's made on her.

Somehow it always comes back to the marks. The bruises, the rope-burns. Sometimes even welts from his hand, because he's braver and braver with that, and he's hitting her a little harder every time. Going for longer.

 _Hitting her._ And when she thinks about it in those terms she flushes all the way down her chest, flushes all the way down between her legs, and yes, sometimes she does still wonder if maybe there's something wrong with her that she feels that way.

She thinks about the hospital, and about the scars on her face and about Gorman, and about the scar high on her forehead and the other one, the one at the top of her head which her hair always hides, and she wonders if she's broken.

She's not afraid when she wonders these things, but she wonders them anyway. It would be nice to know herself a little better than she does.

But maybe that's what this is about.

So yes, it comes back to the marks. Not like the scars - these fade, and she can watch the process, watch the bruises change color and disappear back into her skin, and she can see how there's no trace of them at all in her flesh. He marks her and later she's perfect again.

But now she catches herself wishing - from time to time - that the marks wouldn't fade as quickly as they do.

He looks too. She knows he does. For a while they hid them, but then they stopped, or at least they stopped trying so hard. The ones on her wrists, her arms, they don't really bother with anymore. Bruises on her neck, they have to be more careful about, because those are a lot harder to shrug off. And once - once only - Maggie pulled her aside, and she knows Rick did the same to Daryl, and while she's not sure how that conversation went and she hasn't asked, she'd guess it went sort of like the one with Maggie did.

_I'm fine. That's not what this is about. What we're doin'... That's our business. It's alright. You gotta trust me._

Lifting her hand, combing it through her sister's hair, feeling a strange and welcome peace move through her and thinking how much she loves her, how much she loves all of them, how safe and happy she is here - with _him_ \- and how glad she is that it didn't end months ago and she gets to have this now.

_I love you, Maggie. And if I'm ever in trouble, swear I'll come to you. But this is my life. I get to choose now. I earned that._

And there's so much pleasure in making that choice. That alone.

It always comes back to the marks, and how when they finish whatever work detail they both happen to be on - sometimes the same one and sometimes separately - they come back together and they eat lunch or dinner together, not always alone but a good deal of the time, and he finds so many excuses to touch her. To touch _them._ Careful little things, soft, as if he means to contrast how he touches her now with the way he touched her to put those marks in place. More than once they've been talking or doing something else or just together not doing much of anything, or maybe they're sitting under the trees in the cool of the early autumn evenings and she's singing to him, and he has his head in her lap and she's working her fingers slowly through his hair, and he reaches up and takes her wrist. He finds the ring of raw skin the rope left there and he sweeps his thumb across it, light but enough to make her draw in a sharp little breath.

And he tugs it to his lips and kisses it, and she leans her head back and closes her eyes and lets the breeze and the sound of children playing and the warmth of his mouth wash over her.

When the wind is right they can smell the dead - they always do, but the smell gets stronger. When he and she are on the walls they see them, a constant slow trickle weaving their way through the barriers of dead cars. When they go on runs it's always dangerous, just like it was before, and she knows this place is ultimately just an illusion. She knows it won't last.

She thinks about the prison and about how then hope and faith for her meant the refusal to confront the idea that it would all be gone someday. She won't make that mistake again. She has hope and faith that while this lasts, they'll make it everything it can be. She knows that her own survival was probably just a reprieve, that no one dies of old age anymore, but she has hope and faith that in the time they're given, they'll love as much as they possibly can.

So she won't be horrified by this. By how much she loves his hands on her, by how much she loves it when he pins her down, when he ties her up, when he wraps his fingers around her throat, when he slaps her, and - yes, yes - when he fucks her hard enough that it hurts the day after. She won't be horrified by it, and if he's still unsure, if he's still even a little afraid sometimes, she'll help him until he isn't anymore. Until he can laugh at this, until it's just fun, until it's just _playing._

Even though it's not _just_ anything.

He touches her marks and she sees the wonder on his face and she thinks _I made it. Look, you can see it,_ and she doesn't have to ask him to know he's thinking the same thing.

Leaning in and grinning against his ear. _Tonight. Ten-thirty. Better not chicken out on me._ Practically dancing away from him before he can say anything, tossing him a careless smile over her shoulder with her hair flying loose from its ponytail, all her scars and all her beautiful marks, and she doesn't feel broken. She feels powerful. She feels like a miracle. She feels fucking _bulletproof._

And tonight at ten-thirty he gets to remind her of just how true that is.


End file.
